Pizza lovers can handle the Truth

Pies the best of Neapolitan, New York styles

Even behind his pandemic-era bandanna, John Winkler strikes a familiar figure at his brand-new Truth Pizzeria on the East Side, coming off six years of running the Sulla Strada Pizza truck at Alamo Street Eats and Squeezebox. It’s the intensity of his eyes, the skater’s physique, the smooth, practiced way he maneuvers pizza around the woodfired inferno of his Belforno oven.

The shop cuts a bold figure, decked out in colorful graphics and skateboard art by San Antonio artists Scotch! and the streetsavvy Robert Tatum. The timing is just as bold, opening in the middle of a COVID-19 crisis that presents an ever-shifting landscape for restaurant owners. It’s a risk shared across the new Hackberry Market, where Truth resides alongside Black Laboratory Brewing, The Farmers Butcher and the accomplished Korean cafe The Magpie.

But Winkler takes it in stride as customers stream in to pick up one of the original get-it-and-go staples of American food culture: “This is really one of the best businesses to be in right now.”

Best pizza: Winkler describes his pizza as somewhere between

New York and Neapolitan style. That’s a good place to be for Truth’s white pizza ($12 for a 12-inch pie).

The crust was thin enough to pick up the toasted char only a wood-burning oven can create, but not so thin that it fell into brittle ruin. The uniform mozzarella base provided a stable canvas for graffiti swirls of ricotta cheese, flashes of parsley and sweet-sharp cloves of roasted garlic.

Other pizzas: The white pizza’s subtle style found a kindred spirit in Truth’s margherita pizza ($12 for a 12-inch pie), with slices of Roma tomato and a generous chop of fresh basil in solid balance with the melted mozzarella and rippled crust.

A custom pizza ($13.50 for a 12-inch pie) took ricotta and combined it with slices of Italian sausage and sweet roasted red bell pepper for one of my favorite pizza combinations, executed here better than any other San Antonio shop so far.

If you like the low, greasy growl of a classic pepperoni pizza, Truth has your number. With the flavor of a New York street slice and the rippled mahogany crust of a Neapolitan pie, it’s the embodiment of Winkler’s hybrid style ($12 for a 12-inch pie).

My problem with most veggie pizzas is they come across like a salad, with too much garden and not enough gusto. At Truth, the veggie pie gave the mushrooms, spinach, bell peppers, tomatoes and onions room to breathe — and, more importantly, room to cook. At $18 for a 16-inch, it was a lot of pizza for the money, and the crust held up from collar to point.

Truth Pizzeria has opened in the new Hackberry Market. Among its offerings are, from left, veggie, white, sausage, pepperoni and margherita pizzas.